Kyle Hudson and Chester County Historical Society create time machine

Staff photo by Vinny Tennis
Kyle Hudson uses a smart phone on the Chester County Time Machine Walking Tour in West Chester. Nine locations have been outfitted with a QR code that can be scanned and view a photo between 1870 and 1960. Take the tour to see where this is.

Late one night while working at Penn’s Table in West Chester, Kyle Hudson looked at the old photograph of Gay Street that hangs in the restaurant, and it got him thinking about the archives of old Chester County photographs available.

He approached Pamela Powell, photo archivist at the Chester County Historical Society, and they collaborated on the project that is now known as the Chester County Time Machine.

The Chester County Time Machine is a walking tour around West Chester with nine stops, each equipped with a QR code, which is a type of bar code. Scan the code with a tablet or smart phone and an old photograph will pop up that was taken from approximately that spot.

“The idea is to have these codes be where the picture was taken, so when you stand there and you hit the code and you look out, it lays over the present day,” said Hudson.

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Underneath the picture is the historical background of the photo and when it was taken. Also accessible is a map of the tour that Hudson built on Google maps.

“(Kyle’s) really the creative person behind it,” said Powell, “We really thought it was a fantastic idea…The public will have a lot of fun looking at historical photographs in a completely new way.”

“What I really tried to do is focus on local businesses. I tried to stick it to the community stuff,” said Hudson. “It was really cool how the community helped us make this happen. I tried to make it all West Chester centric.”

However, Hudson and Powell have plans to try this in other towns in the County as well as expand what they have started in West Chester.

“We have a huge collection of photographs of all of Chester County,” said Powell.

And “because of the nature of the technology we don’t even need to move the codes – I can just change the website and the picture so long as it stays in the same spot,” said Hudson. “There’s a lot of stuff we can do with this… Ultimately, I would like to build an app that did this.”

Hudson is able to track how many people scan the codes. The most popular stop is at Penn’s Table and the least popular one is at Test Subject because it is a little “off the beaten path.” The tour has been up since October, and he said a big hurdle has been getting the word out to people. But the feedback that he has gotten has been positive.

“People have found it interesting that have heard about it at least. I’m excited about it,” said Hudson.

Hudson likes to find what is different in the pictures. The Sprazzo building once had a third story, North New Street has trees now that weren’t there in 1959 and in 1899 there was a fountain in the middle of the Market Street.

“Apparently it got taken out because of cars. It was great when there were horse and buggies, but it was too narrow for cars,” he said.

But he also tried to pick photogaphs with people in it, to show what hasn’t changed.

“I think a lot of people forget about people living 100 years ago really weren’t that different than us,” said Hudson. “They got mustaches and beards, same as we do. The Penn’s Table one has a cop talking to a lady – it’s just all very normal stuff.”

Powell and the historical society are also very excited about the project and the possibilities it has to offer the community.

“I think since West Chester is such a walkable town, a walking tour like that is such a fabulous thing for West Chester,” said Powell. “I think it’s really going to be fun for people when the weather warms up a bit and everyone is downtown.”